


The Way I See It

by GinnyBloomPotter



Series: The Ticking of My Pulse (The Clock in My Ear) [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate points of view, Angst, Apocalypse, Brother-Sister Relationships, Crushes, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, Good Brother Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Good Sister Allison Hargreeves, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Monologue, Introspection, Lesbian Vanya Hargreeves, No Incest, Protective Siblings, Sequel, Sibling Relationship, Siblings, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sisters, Vanya Hargreeves Deserves Better, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, White Violin Vanya Hargreeves, rated for language, there's a lot of cursing, they all fucking deserve better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 16:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19948975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinnyBloomPotter/pseuds/GinnyBloomPotter
Summary: Six Alternate perspectives on the "Ask Yourself Now Where Would You Be (Without Days Like These)" Apocalypse Timeline and One Alternate perspective on the morning after.





	The Way I See It

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to provide a little bit of an idea of what was going on while Vanya was going all White Violin, and then I wanted Allison in there too because I love her so I put her in. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy it!

** One: Klaus **

So, it looked like the god of death was a little girl on a bike. Or maybe she was capital G-O-D God; who really knew. Except her, he supposed. 

But the real kicker was that  _ she didn’t like him. _

Bike girl didn’t like him.

Why the fuck wouldn’t Bike Girl like him? He was funny and nice and only mildly addicted to alcohol and weed. He’d even managed to make  _ Dave  _ like him and Dave was the greatest person in existence. 

He woke up in his boyfriend’s arms. It looked like he’d been crying. Klaus was torn between being upset that he’d made Dave cry, glad that he liked him enough  _ to  _ cry, relieved that he had woken up so Dave would stop crying and also  _ he could be with Dave _ , and offended because  _ why the fuck hadn’t Bike Girl liked him? _

Then he actually remembered what happened. 

He sat up and took stock of the room around him. Distraught but relieved boyfriend? Check. Fretful and no longer damaged mother? Check. One dead assassin and one missing assassin? Check and… not check? Could he check it off if the guy was missing? Scared and exhausted sister?

Nope. Vanya was gone. 

It was pretty fucking clear that she’d had a rough night. He didn’t ask any questions, because he was familiar with  _ really _ not wanting to talk through his shit, but he could tell that something had set her off and she was feeling like a moody bitch. So he left her alone as much as he could and went to make out with Dave. 

But then he’d heard the gunshots and the screaming and he went to investigate and he  _ got fucking shot _ . He remembered falling, remembered Vanya crying over his dying body, but he couldn’t remember much else until he was meeting Bike Girl who, may he reiterate,  _ didn’t fucking like him. _

So sometime in the minutes after he died, Vanya must have left. But where would she have gone? 

It took about half an hour for Mom to finish treating the bullet wound, which had, apparently, been mostly healed by whatever resurrection process he’d gone through. It took even longer for him to convince Dave and Mom that he had to go and look for his missing siblings. 

Dave decided to stay back and help Mom begin the cleanup and also, find Pogo because Klaus was pissed at the primate, but that didn’t mean he wanted him  _ dead. _

And so Klaus set off on his own to find Vanya and his brothers. 

Boy, Allison really did miss all the fun. 

* * *

**Two: Ben**

“Ben? Can you hear me? Ben, get up.”

Ben came to with a pained groan, pushing away the face hovering over his own. He lay still and took stock.

Everything was kind of sore, nothing more than his head, but was the kind of pain that he suspected would go away on its own in a few minutes if he ignored it. 

He sat up carefully, trying to remember what the fuck had happened.

Klaus had been the one hovering over him, and his other brothers were collapsed along with him in the rubble of what once was Griddy’s donuts.

Oh right. Vanya. He looked around for her, heart in his throat, but she wasn’t there. He was relieved for a moment that he didn’t see her dead body, but, remembering the look on her face as she lost control of her powers, he started panicking again. 

“Anyone dead?” Quentin called out cautiously as he too sat up, and he got pained groans from Luther, Diego, and Ben in response.

“I’m pretty sure I was dead,” Klaus mused with a grin, “but it looks like I got better so we’re all good.”

And then Ben really was worried. “What the fuck do you mean, you were dead?”

Klaus shrugged. “If I’m remembering correctly-- and bear in mind, I was unconscious for part of this so the jury’s still out on  _ that _ \-- I got shot by one of those assassins you were supposed to be looking for and died in Vanya’s arms, only to get kicked out of the afterlife by a little girl on a bike who  _ didn’t fucking like me what the fuck?  _ But anyway yeah. Then I woke up to find Vanya missing and Dave crying over what had just been my corpse.”

Ben wanted to be upset. He really did. It wasn’t his fault that he got distracted when Quentin snorted.

“Well, that explains why Vanya had so little control over her powers and why she didn’t just stay home where we told her to stay. If she watched you die, she probably wasn’t thinking all that clearly.”

“Okay,” Luther said. “But where is she now?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t think she’d be okay,” Ben added. “Where would she have gone?”

“Maybe she went to get Eudora?” Diego suggested, looking hopeful, and Ben didn’t want to shatter his dreams, but he kind of doubted that she’d be thinking clearly enough to do that. 

Quentin didn’t seem to have the same reservations. “Doubtful. She’d have to be thinking clearly for that, and she just watched Klaus die.”

Diego stubbornly pulled out his phone. “It’s worth it to check.”

“You just want to call your girlfriend,” Luther muttered. Diego, thankfully, did not respond.

Ben wondered how the phone wasn’t smashed, because Diego was able to call Eudora without an issue, even though he’d gone through a window with it in his pocket. 

He stopped wondering when Diego reported that Eudora hadn’t seen her. He stopped wondering because he may have thought Diego was being stupid, but that didn’t stop him from getting his hopes up. 

The question was, why hadn’t Diego called  _ Vanya? _ If anyone would know where Vanya was, he thought it would probably be her. She might not actually pick up, but it was worth a shot, right?

God, his siblings were idiots. 

He plucked the phone out of Diego’s grasp, ignoring his protests, and found Vanya’s number. She was in his contacts as “Precious Cinnamon Sister.” That gave him pause, because he didn’t think Diego was the type to put nicknames, especially not those kinds of nicknames, but then he saw his own number under “Bentacles” and Klaus’s under “My Favorite Person Who Has Ever Lived Ever,” and he figured out that Klaus had probably done it as an April Fool’s Day joke that Diego hadn’t had time to fix yet. 

Huh. He’d almost forgotten it was April first. 

He couldn’t say he was surprised when his phone call went unanswered, but he also wouldn’t deny the intensification of the worried tightness in his chest. 

“She might’ve gone back to the house?” Luther suggested. He didn’t sound all that confident, but no one had any better ideas, so they decided to go with it and head back to the Academy. If nothing else, it would make a better base than the Griddy’s Parking Lot.

They’d only been walking for a couple of minutes when Diego’s phone starting ringing in Ben’s hand. He answered on pure instinct.

“Hello?”

“Oh good, you aren’t dead,” a female voice said. It sounded familiar, but he wasn’t sure who it was.

“I’m sorry?”

“Vanya told me you had all died. Speaking of,  _ what the fuck is going on with Vanya?” _

“...who is this?”

“This is Helen. Is this not Diego?”

“No, it’s Ben. I have Diego’s phone.”

Everyone was looking at him, and Diego reached out to take the phone from him, but Ben stepped out of reach.

“I didn’t know you had Diego’s number,” he commented, and Helen scoffed. 

“Oh please. I have everyones’ numbers. Took them off of Vanya’s phone years ago, just in case. Now, and I reiterate,  _ what the fuck is going on? _ Why are Vanya’s eyes glowing? Why is she acting so weird?”

“Wait, so you’re with her? Where are you?” Even though Helen was obviously and explicitly concerned, a bright sense of hope loosened the tightness in his chest, and decided to blatantly ignore her questions, and the various other questions they brought up.

“The theater. Vanya came in talking about how she ‘had to play’ even though Adams took second chair away from her because she missed rehearsal yesterday, and she was saying it all with this strange calmness, and then she fucking killed Adams and now I have to go out there or else she might hurt someone else, but I’m really concerned, and you need to get here now.”

Hearing that she’d missed rehearsal and lost second chair was a surprise, and that concerned him, because Vanya hadn’t told him, hadn’t told anyone, and that meant that she’d been dealing with it on her own. Also,  _ what did Helen mean Vanya killed Adams? _

“We’re coming.” He hung up on Helen without another word, the hope rotting as he did. 

“Good news; I know where Vanya is. Bad news is, it doesn’t sound good.”

* * *

**Three: Zoe**

Zoe had circled the area around the theater three times before she realized that no, that wasn’t a bus stop, that was actually a parking spot, and it was _literally thirty yards from the entrance_.

She hadn’t ever done this before, this “giving her name at the box office” thing, and just… getting a ticket. No one she’d ever known had ever been in a position to do that for her, get her a ticket for something, which made trying to see show tours annoying when they came to Pennsylvania. (She had to  _ buy  _ a ticket. With  _ money _ . A  _ lot  _ of money.) So this, this was weird.

The woman at the box office counter didn’t seem to think so, however, because when she told her her name, she just looked down at her list, picked up a ticket from a waiting stack by her hand and pushed it through the window at her. 

She smiled at the woman as she accepted it and turned to leave, almost running into the person behind her.

“I’m sorry!” she apologized as she made to move out of her way. The woman didn’t react, choosing instead to peer thoughtfully at her. 

“You said your name was Zoe?” she asked, and Zoe nodded slowly. “You Vanya’s new neighbor?”

She nodded again. The woman beamed. “I’m Toni! I’m her--”

“Oh, the best friend!” She remembered the name from the breakfast date (was it a date? Did they ever clarify that? Or was that just like a pre-date?) they’d had a few days before. “I didn’t realize you knew about me.”

Toni’s eyes twinkled. “I know everything, Zoe. I’m omniscient.” 

Zoe smirked. “Yeah, Vanya mentioned that. It’s good to meet you, Toni.”

“You too. Where are you sitting?” she asked as she approached the box office window to collect her ticket. “Hi, Karen,” she said to the woman. “You got my ticket?”

“Toni! Yeah, it’s here. Enjoy.”

“Thanks, Kar.” She turned back to Zoe. “So?” 

“Uhh…” she looked down at her ticket. “Row PP, seat 4.”

“I’m seat 2! Looks like they had a lot of reservations. Usually, they try to give orchestra members’ parties priority seating. This is like, last row.”

Zoe shrugged. “I mean, we’re here for the music, right? Technically, should it really matter?”

Toni shrugged as well. “I mean, no. I guess not. But now we can’t critique everyone’s outfits.”

“How tragic,” she deadpanned. Toni grinned. 

“Très.” 

Zoe returned her grin and followed her into the theater.

* * *

Zoe couldn’t see much from her seat in the back, but she could tell that Vanya looked hot in her tux. Her eyes also seemed to glow, which she was sure must just be a trick of the light. 

And holy crap her  _ playing… _

It was like there was magic in the air.

Was she in love with this girl? She’d known her for barely a week. Surely that wasn’t long enough? 

Okay, so maybe Romeo and Juliet had a point. 

Crap. Her English teacher was right. Ew.

Vanya stood up and moved to the front of the stage. Her eyes had closed. All of the other instruments faded to the background.

Then she really did start glowing. She exchanged a look with Toni. Something must be going on. 

A whiteness spread across Vanya’s body. Her tux wasn’t black anymore. Her violin wasn’t brown. Everything was just… white.

The building was shaking. No one seemed to be able to move. 

Doors slammed behind her, she and Toni whipped around. 

(Why was no one else reacting?)

Five men stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the bright light of the house behind them. 

“Quentin,” Toni hissed, and one of the men, a thin one with a shock of dark hair wearing jeans and a plaid button down shirt, grimaced at them. 

“Sorry we’re late. Klaus was dead and the rest of us were knocked out.”

It was a testament to how long Toni must have known him for her to react as nonchalantly as she did. Zoe was a confused mess, herself. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” Toni continued, voice rasping harshly. The person in front of her shushed her. Zoe shushed mockingly back, and Toni gave her a grateful grin, before it dropped and she looked back at who she assumed to be Quentin. 

“Why is Vanya turning white?” Zoe added. “Also, you’ve noticed the shaking, right? Please tell me you’ve noticed the shaking?”

“Who the fuck are you,” asked the man with the dark buzzcut and facial hair.

“I’m Zoe.”

The tall man with the curls who wore a skirt beamed and clapped. “So you’re the girlfriend! Pleasure to meet you! I’m Klaus, you’ve probably heard all about me because I’m Vanya’s favorite…”

The person in front of Toni shushed again, and the shaking of the building started getting more intense. People were starting to look around curiously, but no one was alarmed enough to leave their seats. 

“Yeah, I have heard about you, but also, are we going to talk about the shaking? Because I’m starting to get really concerned.”

“Vanya’s powers,” said the tallest one. “She’s losing control. We need to get everyone out of the building.”

“Vanya wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Klaus insisted.

“She’s obviously not thinking clearly right now,” said buzz-cut. “She probably still thinks you’re dead.”

“So what do we do?” Quentin tried to shift the topic. “No one’s going to listen if we yell for evacuation.”

But there was something they would listen to. 

Zoe stood and tried to climb over Toni. She shifted to make it easier, even as everyone sitting around them gave her strange looks.

Buzz-cut tried to stop her with a hand on her arm. “What are you doing?” he hissed. She shook his hand off.

She had seen the fire alarm on her way to her seat. It was easy to find again, and she pulled it. 

Lights flashed. An ear-piercingly loud alarm started ringing. The music came to a screeching halt as the entire orchestra stood and started fleeing. 

She grabbed a hold of Toni’s wrist and pulled her to the exit, ahead of the panicking audience. 

She took hold of Quentin. “Help her,” she pleaded. Then she let herself be swept along with the crowd. 

* * *

**Four: Toni**

Toni had always enjoyed going to Vanya’s concerts. She was a fantastic violin player, and it said a lot about the quality of the orchestra that she was only third chair.

Or maybe Toni just didn’t know any better. To be fair, she was always incredibly impressed when anyone managed to play the violin without creating that horrible screeching noise. She’d taken lessons for a year when she was seven and never managed to make it through “Baa Baa Black Sheep” without producing the horrid sound. 

But even her untrained ear knew that Vanya sounded better tonight than she ever had before. She knew her move to second chair was coincidental, a result of her predecessor’s unfortunate hospitalization, but from the way she was playing, Toni was shocked she hadn’t made the move earlier. 

But then, from what Vanya had told her about the “anxiety” drugs after she stopped taking them, they probably had a lot to do with that. 

Still though, she sounded incredible. 

And then she turned white. And then the shaking started. And then her brothers showed up. 

She could have sworn Quentin had said that Klaus died, but she couldn’t dwell on that. Not just then. Besides, he was there, he was fine, it was fine. 

She had to admit, Zoe was pretty awesome. She had wanted to be wary, be coldly aloof so that she could intimidate her into treating Vanya right because fuck it, Vanya deserved a girlfriend who was going to love her and respect her. She’d been through far too much shit so far. 

But fuck if she wasn’t slightly falling in love with Zoe already. She was sweet and she was funny and that fire alarm move was badass. So she’d admit, a slight thrill went through her when Zoe grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to run. 

Or maybe that was the adrenaline. 

The two women made it outside before the alarm stopped ringing. 

Toni gave Zoe a warm smile. “That was a nice move, with the fire alarm. Quick thinking.”

Zoe shrugged and offered her own, more self-deprecating grin. “Never let it be said that I’ve learned nothing from watching 2005 Doctor Who. The whole plastic-Mickey thing was weird, but that restaurant scene was a gift.”

“Wait, you watch Doctor Who?”

“...What self-respecting nerd doesn’t watch Doctor Who?”

“You call yourself a nerd?”

“I don’t think you can read Lord of the Rings as many times as I have and  _ not  _ be a nerd.”

Toni scoffed. “If everyone who read Lord of the Rings was a nerd, my entire ninth grade class would gain the title. I assure you, a majority of them are nowhere  _ near _ cool enough to be nerds.”

“Ok, hang on. Why is my nerdiness being called into question?”

“Because if nerds could look like  _ that _ , we probably wouldn’t have a reputation for being bullied.”

“Are you-- Are you trying to tell me that I’m too  _ pretty  _ to be a nerd?”

Toni scoffed again, and Zoe gave a confused smile. “Thank you? I think? But also, that should mean you aren’t a nerd either.”

Toni smirked and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I’m just awesome like that.”

Zoe laughed, and fuck, but Toni could really see what Vanya saw in her. She was  _ sweet _ , like really sweet, and she was kind of a badass and really fucking gorgeous and if she wasn’t careful, she might find herself trying to take Vanya’s girlfriend from her. 

* * *

**Five: Quentin**

Vanya was fucking  _ glowing _ . 

She’d turned white and she was glowing and she was playing better than Quentin had ever heard her play before and she didn’t even stop when that Zoe girl who he would  _ definitely be doing his research on the second this was all over _ had pulled the fire alarm and went running for the exit. 

The five of them pressed themselves into the newly vacated row to wait out the tide of people running to evacuate the theater. Then, they ran for the stage. 

Vanya’s friends from the orchestra hadn’t left the stage. Quentin had always had a particular respect for Helen and her no-nonsense attitude (Vanya said it was because they were almost the same person. Quentin refused to admit that she might be right.) and so he was utterly disappointed in her refusal to  _ get the fuck out _ . 

Luther went to try and usher them off of the stage. They didn’t move. Andrew was yelling something Quentin couldn’t hear over the alarm and the shaking of the building. Thankfully, the alarm shut off after a few more seconds, but he still, worryingly, couldn’t hear what was being yelled. 

Okay, so he was a little distracted by his  _ glowing sister. _

She opened her eyes, still playing. She launched into a new melody absent-mindedly as Quentin registered that her eyes were also glowing white. 

What the actual fuck?

A man showed up with a gun, firing a shot at the air above the musicians. Finally, they went running.

The man was yelling as well, but Quentin wasn’t listening. He couldn’t listen. Not when more of that white glow was fashioning into a rope that grabbed the man by the waist and seemed to be sucking him dry. 

Quentin couldn’t say that he was upset to see that happening, but Vanya was losing control and he knew she would regret it. Worse, she might end up losing even more control and destroying more than just one asshole with a gun. 

Here’s the thing-- he  _ hated  _ hugging. It felt like it was just a prison made out of arms that released enough serotonin to keep people trapped. It was worthless and meaningless and didn’t matter to him nearly as much as actions did.

But Vanya loved hugs. She’d always accepted that he wasn’t the hugging type and would only instigate an embrace if she really needed one, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew the way she relaxed into their holds when Toni or the rest of their siblings hugged her. He knew how she craved touch and companionship and that, in her head, she thought that if people could stand to touch her, that meant that they actually did like her. 

And everyone else was frozen. No one would move. 

So he did the only thing he could think of to bring his sister back. 

Her arms dropped to her side and she let the man go. 

“It’s okay, Vanya. It’s okay. We have you. We’re okay.”

“You died.” Her voice was cold and toneless, and god that hurt. Even when she could hardly feel anything, she was never cold. “I watched you die. I killed you.”

Was that what happened? Did she think…

“Is that what--” he huffed and shook his head, laughing into her hair. “Did you bother to check? We were out cold but we weren’t dead.”

“Do not lie to me.”

“It’s me, Vanya. It’s Quentin. Have I ever lied to you?”

“Klaus died.”

Why the fuck wasn’t this working? Hugging was overrated anyway. And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to back away.

“I watched it,” she continued. “I checked. I felt it happen. You died in my arms. You were shot and died in my arms and I could do nothing about it.”

“Yeah,” Klaus piped up behind him. Quentin’s arms were starting to ache. He ignored it and focused on Klaus. “A little girl on a bike decided she didn’t like me and kicked me out of the afterlife. Really freaked Dave out. There he is, weeping over my corpse, and then all of a sudden WHAM! I’m alive.”

“...Dave?” 

“Yeah. He had to jump over the railing from the second floor because the entire staircase was destroyed-- did you do that, by the way because  _ damn  _ Van, nice one--”  _ Fuck, Klaus, don’t enourage her, _ “but when I woke up, there he was, just like any good boyfriend should be.” 

He could feel Klaus getting closer, feel him behind him as he grabbed her wrist. He stiffened, but still didn’t let go. 

“I’m alive, Vanya. We all are.”

And then Vanya was collapsing and sobbing and it was all Quentin to do not to drop her.  _ Fucking finally. _

Then their embrace became a group hug and Quentin decided that when this was over, he was banning everyone from touching him ever again.

But for now, he’d hang on. For Vanya’s sake.

* * *

**Six: Helen**

Helen liked to think that she was pretty unflappable. She prided herself on it, actually. She was Helen Park, the unflappable, and the world would bow before her will. 

But when Vanya walked into the dressing room on the night of the concert, eyes glowing a brilliant, bright white, she was a little surprised. 

That surprise turned to utter shock as Vanya proceeded to then  _ stab the conductor through the fucking neck. _

Because here’s the thing. She’d gotten to know Vanya pretty well over the last five years. And she knew that Vanya didn’t hide much from her. Helen knew about her powers. Helen knew about her feelings about her family, even the not-so-nice ones. Helen knew that Vanya was kind of like a helpless, self-conscious kitten, adorable and loving but also so completely weak and tiny and vulnerable. Helen knew that Vanya was meek and timid and didn’t even like hurting the people that deserved it.

So to show up to a show she’d been explicitly kicked out of was decently out-of-character.

To kill a man who didn’t want her to play violin was a full on “demons have possessed her body and Helen was going to have to find an exorcist” level of uncharacteristic. 

Helen tried to pull it together. She tried not to worry too much. She called her brothers, on the off-chance that Vanya was wrong about them being dead, and she got the understudy from the back, who came with her without any explanation whatsoever (she didn’t normally like the fact that musicians could be cutthroat and competitive, but it really did work in her benefit in that situation.) and she went out onstage and wondered when her life had reached these levels of fucked up.

She spent most of the concert wondering what she was going to do about the situation. Part of her was screaming to just let the consequences play out as needed. Vanya dug her grave, and now she had to lie in it. The dominant part of her was already trying to think of where she could hide a dead body and where she could find bleach to take care of the bloodstains in the dressing room.

Vanya wasn’t Helen’s best friend. That was a title reserved for Angie, who had been her Julliard roommate and still wanted to be her friend at the end of it all. To be honest, Helen didn’t even know if she would call Vanya a “friend.” SHe knew that’s how Vanya thought of her, but the truth was that Vanya had somehow managed to worm her way into Helen’s heart like no one else ever had, in a “you are precious and tiny and I will hate myself if I let you die” kind of way. 

Helen didn’t get protective over people-- usually, she hated people. She was protective over Angie, of course, in that way only a best friend could be, and she was protective over Andrew and David too, because they were in her crew and they were good boys and she did have  _ some _ heart. But Vanya was a whole different level. Over five years’ time, she had come to realize that she had basically come to think of this girl as her daughter and if she wasn’t careful, she was going to go all Tony Stark ala IronDad and start adopting stray pitiful violinists and emotionally stunted superpowered people left and right. 

Which was ridiculous, because if she was any Marvel character, she was obviously Stephen Strange. 

Point being, Vanya wasn’t Helen’s best friend. But she was her violin-daughter, and Helen had never met anyone who needed her protection more. 

And so obviously, she was going to try and cover for her. 

Then Vanya started going supernova and fuck it, but Helen was not letting five years of protectiveness and caring go down the tube because the idiot girl had the audacity to kill herself out of rage and misplaced grief. 

She probably should’ve told her earlier that she’d talked to Ben who was very much not dead. 

She wanted to kill Luther for trying to force her away because  _ fuck off and let me be there for my daughter you asshole _ and ew, why did she decided to let Angie convince her to start  _ caring  _ about people this is disgusting. 

Then Leonard showed up and fired a gun and she let David drag her away because she was suddenly busy hatching the perfect cover story for Adams’s death. 

Should she have been concerned with how easy it was to lie to the police about it? Probably, she admitted, but she was too busy being concerned with the fact that she was willing to do it for someone in the first place. 

She ran into Toni standing outside the theater with some random pretty girl she’d never seen before and decided to wait with them for Vanya to come out. 

She didn’t know why. She wanted to go home. It had been a long day and she was very done with it. 

But inside she knew. She had to make sure Vanya was okay, that she wasn’t going to leave in handcuffs, which, to be fair, would probably not happen for as long as she had a cop for an almost sister-in-law, but still, she had to be  _ sure. _

This caring thing sucked, but what the fuck else was she supposed to do?

* * *

**Seven: Allison**

Allison still remembered a time when she’d forget Vanya existed. She remembered when talking on the phone with her seemed more like an annoying reminded that her father existed than an opportunity to  _ talk to her fucking sister.  _

She remembered, but they were a hazy memory. 

“Vanya!” she answered the video call excitedly. She’d only left for LA a couple of days ago, but being cross-country made missing her siblings happen faster. She then noticed how  _ tired  _ Vanya looked, and got worried. “What happened? How was the concert? And what happened with those escaped assassins? I was wondering but I didn’t have time to call for an update yesterday or the day before.”

Vanya sighed heavily. “Okay, so this is going to be a long story and I need you to just… bear with me.”

“Okay…?”

_ How bad could it really be?  _ She wondered.

Turns out, real fucking bad. 

The  _ apocalypse.  _ The  _ fucking  _ apocalypse. She’d missed the fucking apocalypse. 

“Holy crap,” Allison exclaimed. “Do I need to come home?” 

“It’s okay,” Vanya reassured. “It’s over now. I just thought that we should probably catch you up on what happened.” 

She wasn’t reassured. “I said we should move back,” she told Patrick, who was on his own laptop on the opposite side of the dining room table.

Patrick looked up with a raised eyebrow. “And I told you, we can do it as soon as we get real jobs and don’t have to live in LA in order to raise Claire.”

And listen, she loved Patrick. No really, she did. He was a good man, and no, they weren’t the best couple out there. She loved him, and she knew he loved her, but they weren’t  _ in love. _ It was a marriage born of necessity more than anything else. They had sex, they co-habitated, they co-parented, but they couldn’t just… date. They weren’t romantic. They weren’t… they were just… Friends with benefits? Friends with benefits and a marriage license? But she did love him. 

Really. She did. 

But come the fuck on. She was trying to make a point. 

“I have an inheritance!” She argued, and he smirked, rolled his eyes, and looked back down at his computer screen. 

“You’d also be bored out of your skull if you stopped acting,” Vanya remarked, and Allison pouted, knowing she was right, but unwilling to concede the point. 

“It’d be worth it if it meant I didn’t miss anything else.”

Because fuck, but she missed  _ everything. _

“You really didn’t miss much. The end of the world didn’t actually happen. We’re okay.”

“The potential end of the world is still a huge thing to miss!”

The fucking  _ end of the world.  _

Claire came running into the room, hair up in two little bundles on either side of her head and wearing her favorite denim jacket, the one Allison had bought on a whim when she saw that they sold them in both adult and children’s sizes and was feeling cutesy enough to want to match. She had a huge smile on her face, and Allison knew that her daughter knew who was on the phone.

She had a sixth sense for that kind of thing. 

“Auntie V! Auntie V!” she shouted as she shoved her face next to Allison’s. “Did you go out with your girlfriend yet? Are you in love? Are you gonna get married? Are--”

“Hi, Claire.” Her sister was smiling, helplessly charmed. “No, I didn’t go out with Zoe yet. We have a date next week.” And there was that blush.

Allison gave her a knowing look, her own smile breaking out over her face. “Oh, do you?” she teased.

Vanya groaned. “Stop it. I’m getting enough of that from Klaus and Toni.”

Well good. She needed to be teased a little bit. It was a normal sibling experience she’d missed out on. 

Claire glanced down at the time on Allison’s watch, and then gasped. “Mommy, we have to goooo! We’re gonna be late for my violin lesson!”

Allison glared at Vanya. “Do you see what you’ve started?”

Vanya beamed shamelessly. “Do you think I’m going to apologize for that?”

Allison shook her head. “Well, fine then. I have to ‘goooo-’”

“Don’t make fun of me, Mommy.”

“Who’s making fun of you? I’m not making fun of you. Say buh-bye to Auntie Vanya!”

“Bye, Auntie Vanya! When I get back, I’m gonna call you and play for you, okay?”

And oh but that was just the fucking cutest thing. The lessons were probably worth it, just for that. 

“I’d love that, Claire. Bye, sweetheart. Bye, Allison.”

“Bye, Van--” she paused, and narrowed her eyes, “--are you sure you’re okay?” 

She wasn’t sure Vanya really looked it. It had ended last night, supposedly, but she still really did look tired. Tired and weighted and guilty for almost causing the end of the world.

“Positive. Love you!”

“Love you too…” she responded slowly, and she wanted to continue, but Vanya hung up. 

She looked again at Patrick, who was smiling reassuringly. “She’s fine, Alli. You need to trust her. If she isn’t, she’ll tell you.”

Yeah, that didn’t sound like Vanya.

“Do you know who you’re talking about?”

“Yeah, I do. And I know that she’s trying. And that’s all you can hope for. 

He was really fucking good at that comforting thing. 

Smiling at Claire, she allowed her daughter to pull her from the room. 

Music waited for nothing. Not even the end of the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't intend for Quentin to be the fifth, but that's what happened and I'm not complaining. 
> 
> I really wanted to put a "The Last Five Years" reference in there, but I didn't.
> 
> Here, we see the seeds for the Vanya/Zoe/Toni relationship I kind of want to include. I love it so much.
> 
> Also, is it weird to headcanon Allison as aromantic? At least, in this story. I like the thought of that for some reason. 
> 
> I hope you loved it. Please let me know? Who's perspective did you like best? Is there anything else you want me to expand on?
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


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